12.1 On Beckett

Description

Samuel Beckett would have been 100 years old in 2006, and his work continues to provoke creative and theoretical responses in all artistic fields. This influence is deeply rooted and widespread but often subtle and indirect. Furthermore, it can be equally productive to consider Beckett’s work in tandem with and through arts practices with which it has no obvious link. On Beckett traces the significance of Beckett’s figuring of other arts in his writing, and the attractions of even his ‘nondramatic’ texts to performance makers. It maps the Beckett-like undercurrents in contemporary practices and the myriad ways in which aspects of his work – the use of language, images, forms, patterns, sounds, movement, themes, processes, and ideas: any or all of these – continue to provoke artists into new actions.